Great talent has no border. Why should hiring?
Hiring talent internationally has never been more accessible for startups. Finding the right people, exploring new markets and building teams across borders are all part of growing a business today. But what happens once you’ve found the perfect candidate in another country?
Employment regulations, payroll, taxes and local compliance requirements can turn a simple hiring decision into a much bigger process. And for startups with limited resources, setting up a legal entity every time they enter a new market isn’t exactly practical.
So, how can growing businesses take advantage of international talent without getting caught up in the administrative side of things?
Meet Native Teams, our latest Cascade Funding Hub featured partner. With its own infrastructure across more than 95 countries, Native Teams helps businesses hire, pay and manage international teams, making cross-border employment easier to navigate and giving founders more time to focus on growing their businesses.
Native Teams
Meet Mirdon Karpuzi, Partnerships Manager at Native Teams
Based in Tirana, Albania, Mirdon Karpuzi focuses on developing Native Teams’ international partner ecosystem and helping businesses access the infrastructure they need to operate across borders.
Through his work with partners and their clients, Mirdon understands the challenges that startups face when expanding internationally. Finding the right talent is an important step, but managing everything that comes afterwards can be just as demanding.
“A startup should be able to hire the best person for the role because they are the right person, not because they happen to live in the same country as the company.”
This idea is central to how Native Teams approaches international employment: giving businesses greater flexibility to hire the people they need, wherever they are based.
What if your next hire is abroad?
For startups, expanding internationally doesn’t always begin with opening a new office. Sometimes, it starts with hiring a developer in another country, working with a remote specialist or bringing someone on board to explore a new market.
These decisions create opportunities, but they also introduce new responsibilities.
Each country has its own employment regulations, payroll requirements, tax obligations and rules for engaging contractors. Managing these independently can become particularly demanding for early-stage businesses that don’t yet have dedicated international HR, legal or finance teams.
Native Teams helps companies navigate these requirements through its international employment and contractor management solutions. For example, its Employer of Record (EOR) service allows businesses to employ people in supported countries without establishing their own local legal entity.
This gives founders the flexibility to make their first hires, explore a market and decide whether a permanent local presence makes sense as the business develops.
As Mirdon explains:
“Native Teams gives startups a way to hire, employ, pay, and manage people internationally without setting up a legal entity every time they enter a new country.”
Why Native Teams’ local infrastructure matters
One of Native Teams’ main differentiators is how it delivers its services. While some international employment providers rely on third-party aggregators, Native Teams operates its own legal entities in more than 95 countries.
Why does this matter for startups?
When several intermediaries are involved in managing employment services, even a relatively simple request can require multiple steps. Onboarding a new employee, updating a contract or resolving a payroll issue may involve communication between different providers, adding time and potentially increasing costs.
By operating through its own infrastructure, Native Teams has greater visibility and control over these processes. According to Mirdon, this approach allows the company to offer fewer intermediaries, faster onboarding, clearer communication and more transparent costs.
For a growing startup, these practical differences can be particularly valuable when hiring in a new market or trying to onboard a candidate within a specific timeframe.
“The goal is to make international hiring feel less like coordinating five different providers and more like running one normal business process.”
The hidden risk of global hiring
When you’re building a startup, moving quickly is often essential. But international hiring is one area where taking shortcuts can create complications later.
A common mistake is assuming that anyone working remotely from another country can automatically be classified as an independent contractor. In reality, the appropriate arrangement depends on local legislation, responsibilities and the nature of the working relationship.
Native Teams supports companies with employment contracts, payroll administration, statutory obligations and compliant contractor arrangements, helping founders establish an appropriate structure from the beginning.
Mirdon highlights the importance of planning ahead:
“Compliance is much easier to build correctly from day one than to repair once the company has already scaled.”
For startups planning to expand their teams internationally, understanding these requirements early can help prevent unexpected administrative challenges and additional costs in the future.
Taking the hassle out of global payments
Hiring internationally is only part of managing a distributed team. Once people are onboard, businesses also need a reliable way to pay them.
Consider a startup with employees in three countries and contractors in several others. Different currencies, local payment methods and payroll requirements can make monthly payments surprisingly complex, especially without a dedicated finance team.
Native Teams brings global payroll, contractor payments and international employment into one platform, allowing businesses to manage these processes more centrally.
The platform also offers multi-currency digital wallets, giving workers and contractors the flexibility to receive, hold and convert funds in different currencies. For founders, this means fewer separate systems to coordinate and greater visibility over international workforce payments.
“And as the business grows into new markets, they don't have to rebuild their payment processes every time they hire someone in a different country.”
What’s in it for our community
When building a startup, every euro counts. Hiring talent, developing products and entering new markets all require resources, making it important to keep operational costs under control.
Through our partnership, Cascade Funding Hub members receive an exclusive 20% discount on all Native Teams services, including:
Employer of Record (EOR): Hire international employees without establishing your own legal entity in each country.
Contractor of Record (COR): Manage international contractor relationships with compliance support.
Gig Pay: Coordinate payments for gig workers.
Entity Management: Access support for establishing and managing legal entities internationally.
Payroll as a Service: Manage payroll operations across different markets.
This benefit is designed to help startups access international employment and payment infrastructure at a reduced cost, leaving more room in their budgets for recruitment, product development and business growth.
“You should be spending your early-stage capital on building the company, not recreating employment infrastructure country by country.”
For members considering their first international hire or planning to expand an existing distributed team, the partnership offers an opportunity to explore these services with exclusive conditions.
What founders should consider before hiring abroad
For founders preparing to hire internationally for the first time, Mirdon has a practical piece of advice: think about the employment structure before focusing solely on the hire.
Where will the person work? What will their relationship with the company look like? And will the same arrangement still make sense if the team grows in that market?
These questions can help founders choose an appropriate structure and avoid having to reorganise their employment arrangements as the business expands.
Mirdon sums up his recommendation:
“Choosing infrastructure that can support your next ten hires, rather than only solving today's first hire, can save a significant amount of time, money, and complexity later.”
Native Teams continues to develop its geographical infrastructure and platform capabilities, bringing more international employment, contractor management, payroll and workforce administration processes together.
Its goal is to make these services accessible to businesses much earlier in their growth journey, without requiring the resources traditionally associated with large multinational companies.
Making global ambitions possible
International recruitment gives startups access to specialised skills and new opportunities beyond their local markets. Native Teams supports that process by providing the employment and payment infrastructure businesses need to manage teams across borders.
Mirdon captures the company’s approach in one sentence:
“Global talent should be an advantage for startups, not an administrative burden.”
Considering your next international hire?
Explore Native Teams and find out how it can support your next step in building a global team!
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